The rationale for environmental reporting is to equip decision makers and policy analysts with the right information. It does the following:

Provides a picture - a snapshot in time - of the state of Seychelles' environment, cutting across social, economic and natural environments. It includes land, marine, freshwater and biodiversity resources and the cross-cutting issue of climate change.

Establishes State of Environment indicators for each of these sectors, and analyses data for each indicator to assess whether the health of the environmentis deterioting, stable and improving. This allows Government to identify the most pressing environmental concerns and the interventions that are needed to address these concerns.

Identifies many areas where the Seychelles is doing well in terms of environmental management, it also identifies areas in need of attention. We should be concerned about deterioting environmental conditions caused by invasive alien species, deteriorating fisheries, and poor management of waste. We need to build upon and replicate our successes, and act promptly to replicate these where improvements may still be needed.

Provides an important baseline against which national progress can be measured. There are still information gaps that need to be filled, and we shall pay attention to these in future iterations of this report.

The overall outlook for Seychelles' environmental is given a rating of FAIR, which means the situation is not likely to be significantly improving nor deteriorating. However, within specific thematic there is cause for concern e.g. waste management outlook is considered poor in the absence of remedial measures. Similarly, coastal erosion and land use are issues which require careful consideration and ongoing monitoring.